Clandestine Dealings
by Imladviel
Summary: An original character Discworld story, located in the former Guild of Mime Artists in Treacle Mine Road, Ankh-Morpork, currently in the use of the School of the Good Word, an Omnian institution. The only canon element is Mrs Palm's.


**Clandestine Dealings******

by Imladviel

Note: The only canon element in this story is the location of Mrs Palm's establishment, corner of Elm Street and Treacle Mine road. The rest of the characters are all mine, as is the Guild of Mime Artists. Some of the events, or events similar to these, really took place in Kansanlähetysopisto, Ryttylä, Finland the spring of 2001, and I was there, but no one else will admit to it if you ask. We kept it, as I might say, very clandestine.

One of the first decrees made by Havelock Vetinari was to ban mime artists from performing in the street. This meant the end of the old and venerable Guild of Mime Artists, located in Treacle Mine Road right next to a property owned by Rosemary Palm. The guild sold its premises to a real estate agent, and paid off every member with a pension. Most of them found other employment – in the Fools' Guild, Thieves' Guild, Beggars' Guild and the assorted travelling threatres, many of which were glad to take on actors who did not insist to have some lines in every play. Some were only too glad to learn a different trade entirely, and became respected greengrocers, cunning artificers and alchemists, to name but a few.

The old house had many owners, none of which kept it for long. The kind of people who bought a big house on the edge of the Shades were not the kind of people who had the money to paint over the frescoes in every room and ceiling, depicting historical pantomime performances. And the frescoes were… wrong, although very well painted. They were more sinful in a way than the art on the next door neighbour's walls, because negotiable affection was never a crime while pantomime now was. Perhaps that was why they were kept.

Finally the house was bought by Bishop Calaver, an Omnian who had just received a large donation in a testament to start a school in the City of Sin and teach young people the Good Word of Om. The donation stipulated that it had to be a boarding school, and take both male and female students, but house them in different floors. The house in Treacle Mine road offered two floors of dormitories, many classrooms, and a well-furnished kitchen. The neighbourhood was rowdy, but seeing how well the neighbouring house was painted and decorated, he thought it was not as bad as some might think it was. He visited the location in daytime, and did not really pay attention to Mrs Palm's house enough to note the details in the decorations.

Bishop Calaver advertised the School of the Good Word in Ankh-Morpork Times, and got many kinds of students. The school was cheap, it taught grammar and languages, and students who worked in the kitchen in their spare time or took up some other chore got free lodging and education.

Some students were like Rica Evangelia. She came from a family of Ossorian Revivalists, who had many strange customs. She wore a scarf over her hair, and knew how to play the harmonium, but no one knew how to sing the tunes she played, since the majority of Omnia had switched to songs that did not suggest infidels should be slaughtered. She was a cheerful and happy person, who saw it as her duty to help others.

Her roommate, Clandestine Prophet's-Light, whose parents had misread the dictionary, was her complete opposite. She had converted to the worship of Om from the Plain Potato Church. She had read the Book of Om three times, and disagreed with most of it, which had led her to believe she was the next prophet meant to add to it. She could not sing or play, and her cooking was dreadful if enthusiastic. Every male in the school was in mortal dread of having an argument with her, including Bishop Calaver. Her half of the shared room was perpetually messy, and she was friends with some of the girls from Mrs Palms.

As for the males, there was Gaheris Holyblade. He'd been a sergeant in the Omnian army, and now saw it as a kind of continuous battle to keep himself 'pure' and spread the Good Word to infidels. He could not decide if Clandestine was an infidel or just a heretic, but stopped arguing with her after the first month, when he realized she was not listening to anything he said, being too busy thinking about how to flick it aside with a quote from the Book.

There was also Joy-To-The-World-That-Wanders-In-Night, an evangelical Omnian to the core. He was also a comedian at heart, having found that making people laugh was a good way to get them to pay attention. He slept in the corner of the classroom during all the morning lectures, and headed to the Mended Drum every evening to drink a ginger beer very slowly and tell jokes about Bishops. This annoyed Bishop Calaver, but he couldn't do anything about it, because 'Joyworld' actually paid for his tuition, food and lodging in coins instead of chores.

There were others, dozens of them, but these four are mentioned because it was them, late one night, all out of bed after curfew doing what they had planned to do for a week now. They were editing a mime fresco to depict a scene from the Book of Om, the one where Prophet Brutha meets Om's incarnation of the tortoise. The mime artist in the fresco was doing the pose called 'finding something on the ground', so all they needed to do was add a tortoise. But there was a whispered argument going on about what kind of tortoise it should be, and how to make divine wisdom apparent in the features of a chelonian. Clandestine, the only one of them who could draw anything besides stick figures, was ignoring the argument and drawing a tortoise she knew was right. Clandestine always knew how things should be, and saw it as her task to make the world match her vision.

'Clandestine! That just looks like a common tortoise!' Rica objected.  
'Of course. And that is because Om wanted to look like a common tortoise. Second letter to the Omnians, chapter 3, verse 15: 'leaving behind all that was divine, he descended unto the waiting desert, and then waited alongside time for that which must be.'' Clandestine finished painting.  
'It is a good tortoise.' said Joyworld, patting her shoulder. Clandestine flinched. She didn't like being touched.  
'It is not Om.' Insisted Rica stubbornly.  
'No one knows what Brutha meant in verse 15! Theologians have argued about 'alongside time' for centuries!' Gaheris added, despite himself.  
'It is as much Om as that painting of him as a bull in the chapel. Third letter to the Omnians, chapter 12, verse 5: 'No image shall do justice to the incarnations of Om, just as no incarnation does justice to the fullness of his glory as it has been witnessed by the Faithful when he manifests himself, and even the shape he shows at that time does no justice to who he really is. Om is God, and all artists should remember humility when decorating his temples.'' Said the indomitable Clandestine, and added red dots above the tortoise's eyes.

A fifth student arrived, silent on felt slippers. It was Marco Maledetta from Genua, black as the shadows around him, dressed in an old monk's robe. 'Are you engaging in vandalism?' He asked sternly. He was the oldest student in the school, and the only one who was married. His wife was the cook of the school, and they had an apartment on the ground floor.  
'No.' Said Rica.  
'Of course not.' Said Gaheris.  
'I told them not to do it!' Said Joyworld.  
'And I did it anyways. On my own. Would you like to help me paint over this mime artist's makeup? I somehow feel greasepaint and rouge are not Brutha, you know what I mean?' This, of course, was Clandestine, to whom guilt was what happened to other people. Usually after she quoted the Book of Ossory.

'Some other time. Now, I need you, or those of you who do not want to be reported for being downstairs after curfew, to come help me with something.'  
Gaheris stood to attention.  
Rica curtsied in an old-fashioned way.  
Joyworld made a bow fit for the opera stage.  
Clandestine carefully washed the brushes and closed them inside the paint box. Holding the paint box, she stood up, and grinned.  
'I see I have some volunteers. Good. I so do hate blackmailing people.' Said Marco, having done just that. 'The problem is that my wife can't sleep. No, Joyworld, please no jokes on this subject. The reason she can't sleep is she knows what is in the cellar under our bedroom.'

'What is in the cellar?' Asked Rica.  
'Bishop Calaver's personal memorabilia.' Explained Gaheris.  
Seeing Rica's blank expression, Marco added: 'He collects holy items of other religions. His reasoning is that none of the other gods exist, so there is no power in them to harm us. My wife, Genuan like me, knows of voodoo. Things have power, and anything can be a god.'  
'Om is the only God.' Said Gaheris sternly.  
Marco shrugged. 'Call them demons then. Curses. Evil eye.'  
Gaheris frowned. It was true, priests of the false gods had powers that were not of the mundane world. Something must give those to them.  
'What do you want us to do?' Asked Clandestine.  
'I don't know. I thought you'd know – you're all so clever.' Marco said, but his eyes were on Clandestine alone.

Clandestine felt the spirit of Om touch her and whisper things in her ear. 'We shall chant the Ezbekine Prayer of Purification, we shall perform the Changing of Candles with the Old Omnian version of the hymn, and we shall read aloud the rite of banishment for demons and false gods, the unabridged version. I know the prayer and the rite, and Rica can teach us all the hymn.'

They went to a classroom and practiced for a while. It was agreed that Clandestine would go alone to the cellar and light the candles, then they would wait until the candles had burned to stubs, and then everyone would go and perform the Changing of Candles, prefaced by the short but very powerful prayer.

Clandestine sneaked down into the cellar, carrying a single candle. She was not frightened. Or rather, she was only frightened of Bishop Calaver or some other teacher catching her out after curfew. But she had taken off her shoes and socks, and her bare feet made no noise. The childhood of young Clandestine Prophet's-Light had taught her how to hide, sneak and spy. Without meaning to, her parents had named her aptly. She lit the candles, and despite never having been in the cellar before, she knew where she would find them, and did not trip over anything in the dark. It could be that Om guided her steps… or it could be that she had, indeed, as her father had warned the parents of her friends, some elvish blood in her, making her untrustworthy and dangerous, as he said, but also able to see in the dark like a cat, as her mother whispered to her in secret. And she must never sing… because things listened when she sang, things without ears. Doors were opened that should have stayed closed. The world grew thin. Just a drop of Elvish blood… so said the rumours. She'd given up her parents' surname and named herself Prophet's-Light, because a voice in her head had told her to.

Clandestine lit the last candle, then looked at the first one and calculated how long it would take for it to burn into a stub. Then she returned upstairs and finished altering the fresco, accompanied by the comforting sounds of an argument. Then they all went to the cellar.

Clandestine spoke the prayer, then began the ritual Changing of Candles, while the others sang the Old Omnian version of the ritual hymn. Last of all they read the rite of banishment:

'All that is in this room…' Clandestine intoned.  
'All that is in this room… ' The others repeated dutifully, and every line after it.

'Some is of Om. It will remain for ever.  
'Some is of the world. It may remain until the world moves it.  
'Some is not of the world and not of Om.  
'That which is not of the world and not of Om must leave.  
'Therefore in the name of Om we banish it.  
'We ask Om to remove it and put it away.  
'It has been promised to us that what we bind in the name of Om remains bound, and what we banish in His name remains banished.  
'Therefore we banish the Others to whence they came from, and demand that they stay away from this room, for ever.  
'Be ye gone, in the name of Om, and Brutha who is his Prophet.  
'Be ye gone, be ye gone, be ye gone."

'…be ye gone,' Gaheris' lagged a little behind the others. Technically only a priest or monk could perform the banishment, but somehow, this didn't matter. Everyone had felt shadows gathering when the candles were lit. Shadows inside the mind. Everyone had felt them withdraw, until at the end of the rite, only the pure light of the candles remained. Clandestine's hair, the color of good brandy, seemed lit from the inside, every strand glowing. There was a smell of purity in the air. Rica would later say it was flowers, Marco would say it was the sea, Joyworld always thought of it as snow, and Gaheris would compare it to the pumpkin pie his grandmother used to bake when he was little.

Clandestine stood with her arms spread, and eyes closed. She was talking to Om, and arguing with him as usual.  
You know very well there are no demons in these statues and symbols. Nor gods.  
_Yes. You banished them._  
There never were any to begin with!  
_Surely you felt the shadows?_  
Every candle brings shadows, and an elf in the room brings fear.  
_One-eighth elf. You and I, we control it._  
So what did I accomplish, besides some more lies? I brought the darkness with me, then banished it, and now they think I really am a prophet!  
_Everyone brings the darkness with them, everywhere. It is part of being alive._  
Do you have darkness, Master?  
_You should listen to Rica's songs more. _  
Point taken. What shall I do now?  
_Open your eyes._

She did, and realized the others were not paying her any attention anymore. They were studying the religious artefacts of false gods, and in the case of Joyworld, tapping them to see if there were any hidden compartments.

Oh.

_They remember. They will always remember. And Marco's wife will have no more nightmares. She brought her darkness with her too, and let it trickle through the floorboards and gather here, and she has been listening with a glass held to the floor, and banished her own darkness with candlelight and your voice. Prophet Clandestine, it is bedtime, my dear, and rest well earned._

Clandestine clapped her hands, and told everyone the word of Om, only she did not tell them it was the word of Om. 'It is bedtime, my dears, and rest well earned.'

**Probably not the end.**


End file.
